There are many instances in which it is necessary to maintain a medical device “on-body”, i.e., secured to a body part of a patient, e.g., the skin of an arm, abdomen, or elsewhere. One such instance is maintaining a component of an analyte monitoring system, e.g., a continuous analyte monitoring system, on the skin of a patient. Monitoring of the level of certain analytes may be vitally important to the health of certain individuals. In this regard, devices and systems have been developed for continuous or automatic monitoring of analytes in the blood stream or interstitial fluid. One common application of such analyte monitoring systems is in the monitoring and measurement of glucose levels in diabetic patients. Such measurements can be especially useful in monitoring and/or adjusting a treatment regimen, which may include the regular and/or emergent administration of insulin to the patient. Examples of such sensors and associated analyte monitoring systems can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,134,461; 6,175,752; 6,284,478; 6,560,471; 6,579,690; 6,746,582; 6,932,892; 7,299,082; 7,381,184; 7,618,369 and 7,697,967; and U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2008/0161666, 2009/0054748, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,885,698, 2009/0247857, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,346,335, and 2010/0081909, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,219,173, the disclosures of each of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Many of these analyte monitoring systems include an in vivo sensor that is configured so that at least a portion of the sensor is positioned below the skin, e.g., in a blood vessel or in the subcutaneous tissue of a patient. The sensor communicates analyte information to a component positioned above the skin where, in certain embodiments, the component is intended to be maintained or worn on the skin of the patient. This on-skin or external component, in many systems, includes a control unit which has a housing which typically contains most or all of the electronic components of the analyte monitoring system. The housing is typically configured to couple or mate with one or more other portions of the control unit and with the sensor, or otherwise allows passage of the sensor therethrough, while providing electrical contact between the control unit electronics and the sensor.
Implantable or partially implantable sensors are almost always single-use devices with a limited useful sensing life, for example between about 3 and about 10 days, while the electronic components of a sensor system are typically reusable. As such, multiple sensors are used and replaced using the same on-skin/on-body control unit, thus requiring numerous physical and electrical couplings and decouplings between the control unit and sensors. Replacement of the control unit battery also requires some decoupling and recoupling of at least a portion of the control unit. Accordingly, it is important that the mechanisms and/or structures that enable the repeated coupling and decoupling of components be reliable and durable, yet easy enough for a patient to manipulate.
With the increasing popularity and use of on-skin or on-body medical devices, such as continuous analyte monitoring devices, there continues to be an interest in improving the structures by which and the manner in which the on-skin/on-body components of medical devices, are coupled/decoupled/recoupled to/from the skin and/or to each other.